Vancouver’s hot housing market leading national average to hit record

Vancouver and Toronto’s sky-high housing prices are to blame for bringing up the national average, according to new numbers released by the Canadian Real Estate Association Tuesday.

The association says the average home price across the country hit a record $816,720 in February, but if the Greater Vancouver and Toronto areas are cut from the calculation, the average drops by about $178,000.

Last month’s housing costs went up by 20.6 per cent from $677,435 last year, as supply slowly started to return to the market and sales activity picked up.

“As expected, after a bit of a lull in January, we saw the first batch of spring 2022 listings come to market in February, and they were quickly scooped up by buyers” said Cliff Stevenson, Chair of CREA. “It’s unclear if this is the beginning of a re-emergence of some of the many would-be sellers who have been dormant for the last two years, or if the supply will fade towards the summer like it did in 2021.”

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However, many in Metro Vancouver have reported anything but a cooldown in recent years, primarily due to low supply issues. In the Fraser Valley, the benchmark price of a detached home hit $1.7 million last month, and in Metro Vancouver, buyers were seeing an average price of $2 million.

The association attributed the monthly increase in sales activity to a rebound in new listings, which climbed by more than 23 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis to 77,352 in February from 62,539 in January.

On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, listings reached 69,744, a roughly one per cent hike from 68,981 the prior February.